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Die Hard With a Vengeance

I liked this as an action movie and as a sequel. Much better than Die Harder. They were smart to not do another Die Hard since buildings, planes, trains, ships, airports and mountains were all used up. So instead of Die Hard in a casino, they broadened the scope and made the setting a whole city- and then did a good job of including many New York landmarks and trademarks.

• The end

There was no reason for Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson), a civilian, to be in the helicopter with McClane (Bruce Willis) during the police raid. At the end of Act 2, McClane realized where the bad guys were and ran to the chopper Zeus was already on. This could’ve been easily modified by McClane telling him to catch another ride.

• Logic

Yes, all action movies require suspension of disbelief, mainly when the good guy keeps avoiding certain death and the bad guy can’t shoot straight despite using a machine gun. I’ve found that the best action movies are ones that have a minimum of such scenes or have a good enough story, fast pace and real characters that make it easier to overlook the good guy’s incredible luck. In DHWAV, it was more of the latter as I controlled my urge to knock certain sequences, but I cannot be quiet about the following two.

Early on, McClane gets on a subway heading to Wall Street that’s rigged with a bomb. He gets on it from the outside street by lifting an air-vent grate and jumping down directly onto the subway’s roof. Three things are stupid about this. One, those air-vents in New York and other cities are not directly over the train tracks. How could they? All the rain and snow would cause havoc. Two, the grate is lifted way too easily- even for a tough guy like McClane. Three, it isn’t necessary. The movie could’ve skipped the questions of logic here by having McClane jump onto the train from inside the tunnel. They already show him running into the station and just missing the subway. Why not continue that by having him jump on the tracks, run a little and dive for the back of the train? Or show him running down the stairs a second too late for the train, spotting a scaffolding that starts in the middle of the stairs, climbing it and jumping onto the top of the train? Similar, good action without the bitter aftertaste.

The bit at Tompkins Square, where McClane and Zeus have to defuse the bomb with the three- and five-gallon jugs of water. It took me a while to figure it out, but it bothers me that the movie doesn’t show the whole answer. At first, McClane and Zeus can’t figure it out. Cut to Wall Street. Then back to them. McClane says there are two gallons in the small one…if they pour out one gallon from the full five-gallon jug, there’d be exactly four left. That’s the answer, but it seems like an accident, that they don’t figure out how to get the two gallons into the three-gallon jug. And if they don’t figure that out, then how do they know they have exactly two gallons in there?!

(The full answer is to fill the five-gallon jug and pour it into the three-gallon jug until that one is full, leaving a balance of two in the five-galloner. Then empty the three-galloner. Pour the remaining two gallons from the fiver into the threer. Re-fill the fiver and pour it into the threer until that fills. Since there are two gallons in there already, the threer will fill with just one more gallon. One gallon off the full fiver leaves exactly four.)

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